I have two IBM Thinkpads, both of which support battery charge management via tp_smapi. You can tell the battery controller when to start and stop charging. This is a good technique for maximizing battery life.

I recently acquired an HP Elitebook 2530p, and I want to do the same thing with it. I configured what I thought were all the drivers it required in the kernel, but my /proc/acpi directory -- where someone suggested I look -- contains only the items button, event, and wakeup. I suspect I've missed something.

I have set CONFIG_HP_WMI.

Searches for BAT in /proc and /sys:

Code:

find /sys -iname bat, find /proc -iname bat

turn up nothing.

To be honest, I don't know if this laptop even supports charging thresholds, but it's not that old (from 2010) and it's hard to imagine it wouldn't, particularly since it is known for its long battery run time.

It is running xfce4. The power manager does report the charge state when the battery is present, and it must be getting its information from somewhere, but I wouldn't know where to begin looking.

Also, the battery management plugin in xfce4 behaves strangely; when the battery is not present, there is a battery indicator with a bar that is empty and the charge status "50%%". This is different from the power manager, which reports "Power connected" when the battery is removed.